Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Another superb superhero-mod from the Team Raycast that is well known from such much as Operation Eisenfaust: Origins and Legacy, Batman: No mans land and Batman Vs. Bane...

In the Green Arrow you step into the boots of Oliver Queen to fight your way through 15+2 levels to hunt down Deathstroke and to stop his evil plans... As you are only equipped with your fists and your bow you need to use your wits to survive.

Aesthetics wise this mod is beautiful despite still using the original Wolf3D-palette for textures and sprites (some of the backgrounds however use more colors)... Each different environment is really detailed and the lightning effects really create intense atmosphere. Also in some levels there are special effects that will blow your mind, but not to spoil anything I let you to discover them yourself.

Overall the visuals in this mod were great, however considering how much detail was put to the animations I wish there would have been one for the guards to blowing up.

Music fits the levels well giving a boost to the atmosphere, though there were couple of songs (or to be exact parts of those songs) that sounded little odd to me during the first time I played... However after listening them through again and again and again, I learned to like them.

Also the sound design was good and it was nice to see little things like water splashing sound when walking in water added to the game.

Only issue that I have is that sometimes when there was multiple sounds playing at once, the sounds drowned to a obscure beep (however this might have been beta-testing weirdness).

Aside from visuals, map design might be one of the best parts in the game...

Each level have their distinct look and feel and they offers something new to the mod... Despite the diversity, the levels still feel well connected and nothing felt out of place. However this might be also the downside...

In my opinion some of the best levels in the mod were in the middle so the latter part felt bit weaker in comparison. Though I have to say that the last four levels had the most innovative gimmicks I have seen so far implemented in any Wolfenstein mod (actually I would have liked those gimmicks to be used more)...
Another problem with the levels were that as they are quite huge, it is easy to get lost in them so that you end up searching the doors...

Anywayy mappers really have done a great work to create rather atmospheric and interesting levels that are fun to investigate... Though be warned, one of them has a sort of a time limit forcing you to act fast...
Final thoughts:
Overall this is one great mod with great atmosphere and level design full of surprises around every corner...
However I wish there had been some more levels so that there would have been more changes to utilize the new tricks implemented in the latter levels.

I'll give it the final score of 8.5/10
This is a solid mod that you should really play even though you wouldn't be into superheroes or the Green Arrow. I assure that you will have a mind blowing experience.

Wolfenstein 3D was one of the first games I ever played and I think it is quite safe to say that it sparked my interested for programming and spritework.

About two decades ago I found out that one could actually make own maps and textures to the game, so of course I got interested in modding as well... Most of the "mods" I made back then were basically simple mapsets with graphics borrowed from other mods like Beyond the Castle Wolfenstein, however slowly but surely with the help of the Diehard Wolfers forum I started to get into the code cracking as well and started to work on my own TC.

Heavily inspired by WSJ's work and AReyePs SoD mods, this TC finally became reality when I released the False Spear in 2006.

Nearly immediately after that I started to work on a semi-sequel called the Trail of Schabbs (TBA?) and the now dropped Hunt for the Desert fox. However due my studies and jobs taking my time I started to lose that interest for making mods and I mostly aided other people by making graphics, testing and implementing simple coding changes.

Despite that I still managed to create a small mod known as Operation Wintersturm for the mod-in-a-week contests in 2007 and few years later the SDL conversion for the False Spear in 2013... Unfortunately due the lack of testing and me neglecting the quality, the latter one turned out to be rather disastrous mod full of bugs and mapping errors.

So now you might wonder what is this long rant about anyway...

Well, for couple of years now I have been watching Team Raycast to produce high quality mod after another, each time pushing the limits of the Wolfenstein engine further away, and that has sparked my interest once again...

So once again I will be working on a mod of my own, but this time I will be bit smarter about it: concentrating only to a one project at time and only giving updates when there is something to actually show...

TL;DR;
I am back in business and next year I am going to be more actively working on Wolfenstein mods...

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

For the past couple of months I have been working as Java-programmer so I haven't had that much time to actually work on this mod... Still I am slowly progressing so no worries. Next time I update this blog, I hopefully have something more concrete to show to you.

"Wolfenstein 3D", "Wolfenstein: Spear of Destiny", are Copyright iD-Software, creators of the legendary Doom and Quage series of games. To order these great games by iD, visit www.idsoftware.com.You can also purchase the original blockbuster "Wolfenstein 3D" and its sequel "Spear of Destiny", from the iD-Software's site.